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Category:
Science Fiction
ISBN-10: 125787540X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 400
Copyright: 2010
ISBN-13: 9781257875405
Price: $5.99 (eBook)
What would you be like if you could do anything you wanted and feared no punishment?
This is a futuristic Earth, a dystopia. Drugs are a commonplace amusement and unemployment is a capital crime. Freemocracy camps exist for those who make trouble, and most of us try and escape the boredom of our lives in a common virtual world called “The Sim”.
Like the rest of us, Marcellus is just an ordinary. But one day, he finds a magical token. A whole new world opens up. It's a world he was never supposed to see. There are specials. They eat real food. There are the wide, cavernous halls of the White House where the strings of Empire are expertly pulled. The ordinaries are puppets, he realizes. He'll never go back.
Samuel Judas Epstein, President and Lord of the Americas, knows that Marcellus is a threat. Marcellus' friends - Jango, Maya, Icarus, and Jennifer - can't quite understand why Marcellus hesitates. He can do whatever he wants. Why should this red-bearded dwarf stand in his way?
Of course, Marcellus is in a precarious position. Things are more complicated than he thought. He can't very well tell them his Guardian Angel speaks to him in his dreams. They'd think he was crazy.
Later on, Marcellus is banished to the lunar territories. It is there that he meets the infamous general, Munib the Magnificent, the Shadow of God on Earth. It is amidst the peaceful silence and strange beauty of Luna that he is finally able to resolve the conflict simmering inside.
He returns to earth. But does he really set things right? Is it even in his power?
Excerpt
Munib took pity on me. "You are distraught. I should have realized it sooner. I am familiar with the reports. Come, I will show you to your quarters." A small but strong hand took me by the upper arm and led me away.
Munib leaned close and spoke softly into my ear as I stumbled after him. His voice filled my brain like water splashing into an empty bowl. "I understand you, Marcellus. I know more about you than you think. You didn't want to follow the crowd. You refused to be boxed in. You refused to be assigned a nice, cozy place among a row of desks buried somewhere in a tall, nameless building with tainted glass windows, hoping one day you'll be rewarded with a view, stabbing your colleagues in the back, building up a pension you'd invariably be robbed of. You didn't want to suddenly find yourself in your thirties, vaguely unsatisfied, sitting in your car with your wife and kids along with every other fool on the planet who has the week off, gripping the steering wheel and fuming at the traffic. You didn't want every day of your future to stand out clearly in your mind, one after the other in an endless procession until the day you would die. I understand you. There are those of us who choose differently even though we know the risks. We are brothers in that regard, Marcellus. Are you hearing me?"
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